Edmund Gosse's childhood memoir tells the often fractious, often comic story of his relationship with his authoritarian father. A pioneering naturalist and marine biologist, Philip Henry Gosse's strictly religious worldview is brought into crisis by the discoveries of Charles Darwin, and the death of his wife--and Edmund's mother--Emily. As Edmund breaks away from his father's influence, the evolution from one epoch to the next is described in all of its struggle, humor and glory.